1. Field
Example embodiments relate to light guiding plates. Example embodiments also may relate to light emitting devices that include the light guiding plates.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, with trends toward lightweight, slim profile, and/or high performance, image displays have been used in a wide variety of application areas, such as TVs or monitors. Since a liquid crystal panel may not be a self-emission type display, a liquid crystal display (LCD) may require a light source, such as a backlight. A cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) may be used as the light source for the backlight. CCFLs recently may have been used as a light source for the backlight, owing to their low price and/or manageability. However, backlight units employing CCFLs may suffer from drawbacks, such as environmental pollution due to the CCFLs' use of mercury, slow response speed, and/or difficulty of partial driving. To overcome these drawbacks, light-emitting devices, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and/or laser diodes (LDs), may have been proposed as a light source for backlight units instead of CCFLs. Backlight units using light-emitting devices may be environment-friendly and/or may achieve high color reproduction and/or partial driving, such as local dimming.
In general, backlight units using LEDs may be divided into edge-type backlight units (side illumination) and direct-type backlight units (direct illumination). In the case of the direct-type backlight units, a plane light source may be positioned at a lower part of a liquid crystal panel, and/or light may be directly irradiated to a front surface of the liquid crystal panel from the plane light source. The plane light source may have almost the same area as the liquid crystal panel. On the other hand, in the case of edge-type backlight units, a light emitting device may be positioned at the side of the liquid crystal panel and/or may emit light onto a front surface of the liquid crystal panel using a light guide panel.
In edge-type backlight units, however, the light generated from the side of the light emitting device may not spread uniformly across the entire liquid crystal panel. That is to say, the liquid crystal panel may have a portion (e.g., a central portion) that is located far away from the light emitting device and/or darker than the remaining portions.